Crimson Sea

"Dynasty Warriors, in outer space!"

On the strength of Koei's PS2 launch game ''Dynasty Warriors 2'' Japan's oldest new gaming giant has been branching out and adding many more titles to its stable. At first these were all just variants on their war strategy formula, ''Dynasty Warriors'', ''Kessen'' ''Dynasty Tactics'' but now they're moving on to other genres. In 2003 Koei will go online with ''Nobunaga's Ambition Online'' and right before Christmas they released ''Crimson Sea'' an action game set in space in the future.

Crimson Sea is Koei's ''The Bouncer'', meaning it's an ambitious hybrid game - part action game, part narrative-driven role playing game. Likening this game to ''The Bouncer could be seen as a major criticism, for ''The Bouncer'' was not a great game by any stretch of the imagination but I don't mean it in that way. Crimson Sea is an evolutionary step above the ''The Bouncer'' due to its great gameplay. However both games falter when they try to present the story to the player. For the first 3 chapters the story's pacing was moving at furious clip and I could tell that this was not an ordinary game that could be categorized easily and dismissed, however I could also tell that the story was being held back by either an inexperienced producer (I don't think Kou Shibusawa is a bad producer mind you, I've loved his ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'' and ''Dynasty Warriors'' series, but I do think he needs to work on how the plot is developed and presented to the audience) or some sort of memory constraint. It's just too damn choppy. Many of the full motion video scenes (which look very Squaresoft inspired and also very good) end rather abruptly and leave the player in a state of shock: ''That was an unexpected twist, but what the hell, knowing this why am I going to do the following mission?'' Not helping matters any the scenes often are slowed down because for some reason they weren't sequenced all together, instead of having a long scene we have 2 or 3 scenes played consecutively. This is just flat out dumb; the pauses are unnecessary and off-putting. Still what we do end up watching unfolds to be rather respectable. The plot isn't ludicrous and there are flashes of brilliance in both the graphics and the way the plot twists, bolstered by decent voice acting, even though the dialog is somewhat sappy

Clearly the star of this game is the gameplay itself. The control is surprisingly good, but they chose the wrong button to fire the gun. You have three weapons: some sort of gun, a special attack and a sword. You'll want to go with the sword for the most part because the game becomes Dynasty Warriors 3000 then and when the hordes of monsters attack, you'll be there to rip through them just like the gang in ancient China that most of Koei's games are based on. But I must say I was really surprised at how fun it is to use the gun and special moves too. These other options really add an element of strategy to the game. I should also mention that you often have company with you while you fight which is again reminiscent of ''The Bouncer'' or ''Phantasy Star Online''. Also the missions are so diverse and frenetic I was very taken to some of them and I think that since I can choose any single mission to do over as an option that I will keep this game indefinitely, so high marks for selective replay value.

It may sound as if the bad outweighs the good in Crimson Sea but this is simply not so. This is a very fun game to play and a good start for Koei if they decide to continue making games in this vein.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 09/09/03